“I am the salt of the earth…”
When I was about six or seven, I fell off a seesaw. On that fall, the plank I was sitting on scraped through my right thigh, leaving a three-inch wound that seemed to be the biggest I have ever seen as it seemed to run through the whole upper half of my leg. I felt no pain at first. I even thought I was fine as there wasn’t even a drop of blood coming out.
However, the older women who saw me fall panicked. Before I realized what was about to happen, I was already being held tight by three of them. One was holding a bottle of vinegar and started pouring the blackish liquid into my open flesh. Gosh, this was about thirty or so years ago in a really quaint, virginal town where a trip to Manila lasted two freaking days and psoriasis was thought of as a curse. Who would have thought of alcohol? Or antibiotics?
In a matter of seconds the pain started. I shrieked in agony and tried to break loose from the firm grips of those huge maternal arms. I thought that was all they were going to do, but no. Another woman showed up holding a cup of sea salt, scooped a handful and rubbed it on the open wound.
Pain! There was so much pain I swear if I were as dramatic as I am now, I would have fainted right there and then. I remember her saying, “We have to do this or the wound will turn into an ugly scar and no girl will ever like you anymore when you get older.”
I was far from sexual at that age, but that remark scared me more than the pain that was engulfing my leg. For weeks after that fall, I was already the one rubbing salt on my own wound for fear of getting a scar that will shun the girls off when I get older. Every time I ran my little salted palms on it, I tried to ignore the pain until I could not feel it anymore. That fear scarred me more than the scar on my juvenile skin; it became pain more painful than that caused by rubbing salt on a painful three-inch wound.
Well, how much healing can salt do? The wound did heal but for years, the resulting scar lingered there like a giant check mark on my right thigh, sort of like a Harry Potter scar, only it’s on the leg, four times bigger and there was no magic associated with it. I was actually even embarrassed by it.
While I was taking a shower this morning, I realized that the scar is hardly noticeable anymore. It has also been years since I gave it any thought. When did I start forgetting about it? I don’t know. Probably before I even finished college. Or high school. Probably even earlier. And not one woman ever made an issue out of it. Or man. Thanks to human nature: the face gets noticed first, then the chest, then the abs, then the legs (not particularly the thigh, I just don’t know – yet anyway) and you know what else. And thank God I was given some talent, a little bit of brain (I think) and a really agreeable personality to boot. Why else would anyone care about my thighs?
I find myself still rubbing salt on my own wounds though. These are now inner, more meaningful wounds: career, relationships, all those lesions I got from falling off the seesaw of life – hoping that, like Jesus having the blind man rub salt on his eyes, I would be healed and be able to see light again.
Well, try being salt in a wounded relationship nowadays and you’ll get slapped back in the face and still end up in total solitary darkness. Splat! “What the hell did you do that for?!? It hurts! Leave me alone! I hate you!”
Whether salt or some new scientific innovation heals wounds or whether I can be the salt that can impart some significance in someone else’s existence, I guess it is better that I leave some wounds alone to heal. Hopefully, someday, while in the shower again, I would suddenly wake up and mutter to myself in awe, “Wow, has it been that long already?”
And I won’t even remember the last time I felt the pain.
Nhick Ramiro Pacis
11.03.07
www.nhick.com